A Tint of Green
by Shiru23454
Summary: A kokiri child and his guardian faerie become changed as a mysterious force switches their roles. On top of dealing with being 3 inches tall, angels, demons, and other things only read about seem intent on confusing the poor child to death. Chapter 3 up!
1. Prologue

I did not mean to leave the forest.

I had found the entrance to the Lost Woods. It was a rather large log in a cliffside, which I soon entered lest I forgot it's position and was unable to do so later.

I was soon, of course, lost.

My only weapon was a stick. I had got it from a fight with a Deku Baba that oddly popped up on one of the platforms in the lake. Using notes from an old book from the shop, I was able to put a few runes on it to make it many times more durable, as it would otherwise break very easily. I soon needed it to fight off some insane kid I met in the woods who threw flutes at me for some reason. When I exited I found myself in a vast field with much more to explore.

I could go everywhere except where I wanted to go. And that was back. No matter how many times I went back into the Lost Woods, the pathways always seemed to lead right back to that field.

There was a farm at the center of the field, and a nice girl there. Her name was Malon. We talked, but some weird guy with a long, ugly face kicked me out and I was never able to go back there again.

"Oh cheer up!" a small ball of red light with wings flew out of my pack and into my face. I could just vaguely make out a female figure inside the orb if I squinted, but otherwise it was just a ball of red light, and it would stay that way until she decided to let down the light and show me what she looked like.

Sneaking around a giant helicopter flower, I replied "Why don't you try being kicked out of every place you ever try to go?"

"I've been with you the whole time."

"Doing what exactly? Sleeping under my hat?"

"Hey! Being 'a little ball of light' is harder than it looks. What would you know, human?"

"Don't make me step on you."

"You wouldn't do that."

"If you piss me off enough I just might!"

It was then she made the biggest mistake ever. Flying figure 8s in front of my face she began to do what was forbidden. The Evil Act.

"HEY! LISTEN! HEY! HEY! HELLO! LISTEN! HEY! LISTEN! HELLO! LISTEN! LISTEN! HEY! LISTEN! LI-"

Before I realized it, I had hit her.

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Night had fallen by the time she woke up.

The camp was scattered with the remains of a few small skeletons, but I was used to it now. The initial wave seemed to be done, and it seemed tonight was going to be one of the easier nights.

I could tell when she remembered what happened when the small campfire I had hastily made suddenly sprang up to about 8 times its size.

The second wave of skeleton children began to start, but before I could get up, they burst into flames one by one. Whether she was just venting her anger or protecting me, it was nice to know she wasn't going to throw me into a mass of undead soldiers.

By the time the sun rose, she had slain 372 of them without physically moving a muscle. I could tell her mind was taxed, however. Without saying a word to each other, we both succumbed to the sandman.

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Another giant flower spinned above us. It seemed to be ignoring us, and I silently wondered whether it could see under itself.

"Look, I'm so-"

"Shut it."

"It was an accid-"

"SHUT IT!"

We came into a forest, The trees were different here, though. Instead of large and thick, these were small, and the leaves were spiky. But they were just as durable.

I saw a spring. And that was the beginning of the chaos.

"A spring! I haven't washed up in days!" I began hanging my clothes on a nearby tree and ran towards it.

"I think I'll pass."

"Oh come on!"

"Me. Fire. That. Water. Probably cold water."

I laughed and grabbed her wing with my index finger and my thumb and pulled her with me. Water engulfed us.

I immediately realized something was wrong. There was something on my back weighing me down. Through the heavy weight that had been suddenly tied to my back, I furiously swam through the small spring that had suddenly become a vast ocean. I almost didn't reach it to the surface. And when I did I wished I hadn't. Everything had a greenish tint. And it wasn't from the trees. Even the sky was oddly greenish-blue.

Then I realized that my guardian had once seen the same way in red.

She was there. But she no longer had wings, and she was no longer small.

She was human, and I was the fairy.

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"What…happened?"

My wings were wet, and heavy. It was hard to stand up. It felt weird, being grounded because of wings. It didn't make much sense to me.

"I think…this spring…switched us."

"How?"

"I don't know…"

"What are we going to do?"

"We should be thinking about the present, not the future." I said, "Specifically your current state of dress."

She sunk back into the water. "Perv!"

I sighed.

"What am I supposed to wear like this? I can't just walk around without clothes…"

I turned to my own clothes, still hung on a tree.

She stared. "No way! Those are boys clothes!"

"You don't have much of a choice."

She sighed.

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"Your clothes are too small."

"Better than nothing."

She sat down. "What do we do?"

"Well…the spring did this…maybe it can undo it?"

It was then the rotary flower spotted us. It's razor-sharp petals spun as it slowly dropped from the sky. I instinctively reached to my staff and tried to get it out, but instead I nearly ripped out a wing. Turned over, I laid on my stomach as my entire back was in tremendous pain.

My guardian (Well, I guess right now I was the guardian, but…), in turn, tried to take off but stumbled, having gained size at the cost of her wings. Regaining her footing, she grabbed my staff and threw it, luckily having it bounce off the small button on the center of its underside. Wounded, the flower shook in the air and fell onto the spring.

The spring was destroyed.


	2. Chapter 1

"You're trying too hard! You're not a hummingbird, you know. If you flap your wings too fast, you'll run out of energy too fast."

My former guaedian was trying to teach me to fly. Whether I liked it or not, I had to adapt to my current form until we found a way to get our old ones back.

"I know, I know! Just…gimme a minute!"

I tried again. She was right, my body was a lot lighter now. I could stay up only actually using my wings every 2 seconds or so.

"Now you've got it! Now stay in the air for the rest of the day."

"What! Why?"

She smiled. "Practice makes perfect."

"If practice makes perfect and nobody's perfect, why practice?" I countered.

She grabbed one of my wings with her thumb and her index finger and hissed, "Because I said so!"

I struggled. "Hey! Let go! That hurts!"

"I _know_!" She responded, venom on her voice.

I quieted. She let me go after a few seconds, and I stayed in the air like she said even though my back was sore again. It hadn't completely healed from when I almost ripped it out during the giant flower attack.

I didn't bring up that she would have to learn how to fight as well. Otherwise my staff was just dead weight. Then again, she could probably just set everything on fire until it died…

"Where are we going to go? We can't just keep wandering around the fields…" She began after a while.

"I remember from a book…" I strained to find the memory, "There's supposed to be a race of fish people named the Zorro or something…I figure fish people would be the first to know about water that can do this to people."

"Blech. More water." She sighed.

"There should be a river somewhere around here that leads to them…" I looked around, but I didn't see any bodies of water, "We should find it eventually if we just keep walking around."

"Where did you get that book? I don't remember that knowledge being in the forest…"

"You know the training grounds?" I began.

"Yeah."

"There's a hole in the wall there, it leads to a place with boulders rolling around and such…I found another hole in there, and it led to this underground library…" My eyes glazed over as they were replaced by my mind's eye, going over all the books I saw, how many there were in one place… "I haven't even began to read through them all yet…just a few. It's annoying having to go through the boulders every time I wanted to get a little education."

"So THAT's where you kept getting all those bruises from! 'Fell off the bridge' my ass!"

"Wait! I hear water…" I flew higher (although it hurt my back a bit) to see where it was. "It's to our right!"

"What? I can't hear you!" She yelled, from many feet below me.

I flew down, grateful for having less gravity to fight against. "It's to our right."

She smiled. "You're adapting pretty well."

I raised my eyebrow. Though she probably couldn't see it through the green orb thing. But she read my thoughts well.

"Data collection. That's one of your main jobs now, you know."

"It doesn't mean I'm staying this way!"

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By nightfall, my back was simply numb. I had ceased to feel pain. That's how painful it was. It hurt so much that it just didn't hurt anymore. Maybe that was what my guardian was trying to accomplish?

"Umm…hey…"

"What?"

"…Where'd the river go?"

Indeed, I looked around. We had lost track of the river in the darkness. A certain, 4-letter word was on my mind, but I didn't say it aloud. She did, though.

"River's don't GO anywhere! You don't have to read anything to know that."

"Rivers go places! Just really really slowly. With erosion and stuff."

I sighed. "I can't find the river again in…the…dark…" The word was once again on the tip of my tongue.

The skeleton coming up out of the ground behind me, however, seemed intent on pulling it out. Which he (or she, it's hard to tell with skeletons), accomplished without much difficulty.

"Ah! The skeletons!" She thrusted her hand out at it, but nothing happened. "W…what!?"

"You lit at least 200 skeletons on fire not 18 hours ago." I reminded her, "I'd imagine you'd need some recharging before pulling another all nighter!"

You realize by now I am trying my best to avoid the typing of a certain word.

"Well…what do I do?"

"Use the staff!"

"I don't know how to use a staff!"

"Well I do! Just listen up…"

Before I could let out another word, she simply brought it down on the nearest skeleton's head like a medieval broadsword. It was stunned for a bit, but otherwise unmoved.

"That won't work! You have to shatter them into a lot of pieces or he'll just come back together! Whacking him won't work!"

"Stop using so many exclamation marks!" She cried as she continued to whack at skeletons, without heeding a single syllable of my advice.

"Listen! Try to take his head off and then whack his body before he can put it back on! He should die before he can regenerate." Notice how I ended that last sentence with a period. I listen to HER.

Heeding my advice for once, she swing the staff horizontally at the skeleton's neck, coming around full circle with another strike to the waist, breaking the skeleton in 3 pieces. Afterwards, she jumped up with an unnecessary killing strike, shattering the skeleton's rib cage. The remnants dissolved into a purple fire. Barbaric, slightly, but effective.

Another one had taken the chance to inch up behind her. Without thinking, I instinctually flew in front of the creature, years of experience as a human overlaying roughly a day as a guardian. I had realized too late that I was, as of now, about 2 inches in height and equally frail. Sticking both arms out in front of me, the skeleton's claws seemingly hit some kind of invisible barrier, which reflected the strength of the blow and blew the skeleton's arm clean off. That wasn't enough to kill it, however, and it continued to inch toward my former guardian with it's other claw ready. If only the undead could feel pain, it would make our job so much easier.

The combined fatigue of flying for a day straight with a sore back and a damaged wing, as well as deflecting around 2000 PSI of claw from an undead skeleton finally seemed to catch up with me. My former guardian let out a certain word once too many times for one chapter as she saw me sink to the ground, unable to stay afloat any longer.

"You shouldn't…curse…so much…its not very…womanlike…"

"Screw womanness! Quickly- GAH!"

Before she could give instructions, the skeleton had taken advantage of the opening. I didn't get to see anything more than for her to take a poor imitation of a stance I had once widely used, with a slight limp.

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I woke up, but immediately wished I hadn't. A strange, glass container I was trapped in was rattling violently. Before thinking how they got enough glass to make such a large container and wondering if I could fit through one of the many holes in the top, I remembered, yet, again, I was as of now 2 inches or so tall.

Wishing I could simply go to sleep again, I realized I was trapped quite unceremoniously in a small glass jar with airholes poked in the top.

"Come on, now! Wake up!" I heard a young girl's voice that seemed to become tenfold as loud due to the echoing inside the jar.

"Ow…I'm up, I'm up…headache…"

"HA! I knew it! You're not just a firefly! You're SPECIAL!"

"Yeah…glad we've established that…" Before I could say another word, the girl ran off and came back with a fat drunkard I assumed to be her father.

"Look, daddy! It can talk! Really!" She ran over to my humble quarters, "Come on! Say something!"

I turned away, silent.

"Look, Malon…" The fat man seemed like he had just woken up, even though it was clearly past noon, "I'm glad you've found a friend, but maybe you should let him go and find some human companions, eh?"

"If I didn't have to work on the farm so much, I would! If you would let me go outside…"

"You know why we can't do that." He realized his mistake in advice and tried to patch the holes, "It's dangerous out there. Just because you're lonely doesn't mean you can take some random firefly you find out at night and trap it in a jar and use it as a nightlight." He sighed, "Just go milk the cows or something."

"I already did that!"

"Then go brush the horses."

"I already did that too!"

"Well do it again!" The fat man was obviously aggravated and left in a huff.

The girl turned to me. "Why? Why wouldn't you talk?"

"I'm not some parlor trick for you to show everyone you know." I replied, "I have purposes other than entertaining your family. Most of which involve me not being in a glass jar."

"Oh, come on! You would fly off if I didn't!" She sounded as if I had already tried.

"And that's a bad thing?" I replied.

"For me it is!" She almost yelled, "I don't want my family thinking I'm insane!"

"Go brush the horses." I mimicked her Father's voice.

She picked up the glass jar I was in and threw it onto the ground. Broken glass went flying everywhere. She yelled: "Fine then! If you want to leave, leave!"

Ironically, in that very act, a piece of glass had sliced through my arm. Even in my former form, broken glass is enough to cause a pretty painful cut. Imagine what it does to an already injured and exhausted 2-inch tall humanoid.

It was bleeding rather profusely. I was surprised that such a small body could hold so much blood. Or maybe it was just an optical illusion, my eyes, and thus my eyesight having decreased at the same ratio of my body with my brain perceiving the amount of blood as it would have been with my old body. Or maybe it was just a lot of blood.

It was about when my vision began to blur that she realized I was hurt. She put her hands to her mouth. "Oh my god! I'm sorry! Oh god, oh god…you're bleeding…oh god…"

"It's not…that bad…" I replied, staggering away from her. I tried not to fall on the wooden floor, as a splinter would probably be the equivalent of a stake through the heart right about now. Not that I was a vampire or anything. But seriously, a stake to the heart would kill you either way, wouldn't it?

"Hold on! I'll get you fixed up…" She tore off a small section of the bottom of her dress and used it as a tourniquet, effectively stopping the bleeding. My vision slowly went from blurry too halfway decent. She proceeded to go back on a guilt tirade that was 50 "Oh my god" and 50 "I'm so sorry."

"I get the point…" I stopped her after a while, it was getting annoying. The light green glow I always had around me slowly returned as the worst of the injury passed, and soon it was once again, for the most part, opaque.

I suddenly realized something. Looking closely into the girl's face, I commented, "Have I seen you before somewhere?"

She looked surprised. "I don't think so. I would remember meeting a talking firefly."

"I'm not a firefly!" After a small, awkward silence, I cleared my throat and regained my composure before repeating, softer this time, "I'm not a firefly."

"Then what ARE you?" She wondered.

I looked down. "As of now, I'm a Guardian from the forest. I got separated from my Subject last night…" I had finally got the Guardian-Subject roles properly realigned in my head by now.

"Last night?" She exclaimed, "That's impossible! I found you over a week ago!"

"A WEEK!?" I couldn't believe it. I had been out for an entire week. My Subject could be dead by now! "I have to get going!"

"Wait!"

I tried to fly, but my arm suddenly began to sear with pain again. I had been out for a week and I still couldn't get anywhere.

"You're still hurt…"

"Yeah…" I replied, semi-sarcastically.

"I'll come with you!"

The statement caught me off-guard. "Didn't your father just advise you to take the opposite course of action?"

"I don't care! This is all my fault! I'd feel horrible if I didn't help you…"

"Or is it just an excuse to get out of the house?" In a fake accusation, I did an overdramatic point. "You planned this all from the beginning, didn't you!?"

In an equally fake an overdramatic movement, she was taken aback. "Oh, no! I've been thwarted!"

A laugh.

"Fine, you can come. But don't hold me responsible if your father finds out!"

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"We got here just in time…" As we entered Kakariko Village, I turned around to see the last of the sun dissapear over the horizon. Before Malon rushed off, I caught a guard dispatching one of the skeletons with his lance. He turned to her with a "We're got everything under control here, ma'am, carry on now."

I turned around to see her rushing off through the city, exhaustedly flying after her. She wasted no time getting to and up the windmill, using it as a crow's nest to see if she could find my Subject. It seems she knew her way around the town well.

"I make deliveries here." She explained. "We're the only major ranch in Hyrule, so we deliver most of the milk. They only have one or two cows in this city, and they're owned privately."

"You don't know what she looks like." I flew up above the windmill a bit, careful not to get sliced and/or diced, and began to scout out as I had finding the river that lead to the Zorak people.

A bright splurge of red caught my attention.

"There!" I dive-bombed down to ground level, but by then she had already gone into one of the buildings. Malon struggled to catch up, having to climb down the ladder of the windmill, and I ended up having to wait for her, as I couldn't open the door. She quickly did the task for me.

As we ran in, I saw her. She had her back turned to us, but when I called her by name, she turned around. There was a fire in her eyes…a purple one.

In her hands was a blade made of bones, with tendrils of purple fire snaking from the hilt up through her arm.

"Ooohhh…crap…"


	3. Chapter 2

"Run!"

It was too late.

I'm not sure if she even noticed me. Or whoever it was there…it definitely wasn't my subject. She was on the other side of me in almost an instant, heading towards a rather defenseless Malon. By some stretch of fate, I was somehow able to create a small circular arrangement of translucent hexagonal shapes that came together to form a shield, repelling the boney sword. The specter turned back to me, as we both realized what I had done. Apparently the wings and everything weren't just for show.

Suddenly appearing in front of me, I put up another barrier at the last minute to block the sudden blow. The sword was repelled into the opposite direction, but the individual hexagonal shapes that made up the shield were scattered upon impact. She quickly turned the repelling force into forward momentum by turning around and coming back from another direction, forcing me to erect another barrier to disrupt it's trajectory. She spun around in a flurry of dizzying blows far beyond her previous skill, and putting up so many barriers in short succession was getting tiring. Noticing Malon had gone, I used my small size to dodge some of the attacks and preserve energy instead of blocking them.

It was certainly a mismatched fight, I was no more than 3 inches tall and she was at full humanoid height and strength, but I found a way to use it to my advantage by flying around her and making myself extremely difficult to hit, focusing solely on evasion. Although the barriers were new, so far my recently acquired form hadn't revealed much in the way of offense. I remembered when I had deflected the blow from the stalchild in the fields, turning the physical force of the blow around as a destructive energy. However, that specific occasion was accidental, and although I knew I could do it, I had no idea how. But with the speed and force my subject was swinging that sword around, I knew that if I could figure it out I would be able to subdue her with ease.

The house we were in was rather large, although filled with spiderwebs and containing no immediate source of light other than my own projections…

My habit of mental self-narration had finally found a use. Masking my own energy output, the green orb of light that regularly surrounded me slowly disappeared. Hoping to be undetectable, I flew up to the ceiling and rested on a horizontal support beam while my eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness. Unfortunately, my opponent had no such disadvantage. The support beam was suddenly two separate pieces of wood as the bone sword possessing my subject passed through it. The light returned, as the concentration masking myself had been broken, but it was unneeded anyway. It had become apparent the only person it was hurting was myself. The sword had somehow grown almost 5 times in length temporarily, enough to cut up to the ceiling from the ground, but it slowly receded back to its original size.

I flew back up anyway, not bothering with stealth, hoping that this ability took enough energy to where I could wear her out without having to hurt her. Instead, she simply jumped up to where I was and I was forced to use another barrier to deflect her, knocking us both back a few feet in our respective directions. Luckily, I could fly.

The fall didn't seem to hurt her, and the second she landed on her feet she shot up back to me again and another barrier was put in place. But this barrier was different, it wasn't made up of the usual translucent hexagons. Instead, it seemed to be composed of more opaque, square shapes.

As she collided with it with tremendous force, suddenly everything seemed to stop. The barrier spun around clockwise, slowly shrinking into nonexistence. No less than a second later, from the point it had vanished to, a swirling blast of destructive force echoed back to its rightful owner. White tendrils, though generally focused in my subject's general direction, tore up the floor and even the ground underneath as they wildly twisted and turned in all directions like a group of firehoses on full blast that someone had let go of. The bones that had formed around my subject's arm were broken in various places, but quickly reformed as she manned a counter attack.

Suddenly, the entire house exploded in an amazing geyser of purplish flames, causing a panic in the town surrounding it. She rose out of it, with the bones clutching her arm regenerated, and protruding from her back in the form of a single, extremely large skeletal wing, with sheets of a deep purple fire in-between the individual sections of bone. Moving it up and down, she zoomed around the skies, eventually landing on top of the large scouting tower away from the rubble that was once the abandoned house where the fight had started. I figured a small batch of light green against an expansive blue sky would be exceedingly hard to pick out, but with terrifying accuracy, she took off, a wave of purple fire from her feet ripping down the tower, utterly destroying it and burning the scattered wood down to nothingness. Not even ashes remained.

I put up a normal barrier, opting not to reflect the blow, as the unreliable forces would undoubtedly damage the surrounding area, and possibly kill a bystander. Without reflection, I was extremely limited offensively, and all I could do was block and dodge. I wasn't sure how she could always see where I was, despite my attempts at stealth, but whatever it was, it was making dodging extremely hard now that we were in an open area and she had more room to swing her sword. One hit from it and I would be turned into no more than the remains of the tower behind her.

She went under me, landing on some invisible surface and bouncing upward towards me with sword extended. I put up a barrier, but it wasn't enough. She sliced right through it, and a well-aimed sword was only minorly set off by the green light surrounding me, forcing it a small bit to the right. One of my wings was obliterated.

With only my left wing, I could barely stay in the air, and my flying had been turned into a form of slow falling. My subject turned around in the air, dive-bombing downwards toward me at a speed where the shockwave from her rapid acceleration couldn't even keep up with her. I didn't have a choice.

She collided with the solid barrier, with so much force that the bones that made up her sword broke in two, leaving her with the equivalent of a broken beer bottle. But before it could regenerate, the force of the blow was echoed back in a white wave of force. Sandwiched between the reflection and the force of the sonic boom that had followed behind her, a flattened, disk-shaped explosion extended horizontally into the sky, and the possessed warrior slowly fell to the ground.

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I found Malon hiding out in a stall with a cow, and quickly recapped the basics, and told her it was safe to come out. There was this really weird, floating heart thing in there, which was kind of odd, and since I didn't know what it was I decided to ignore it as to not invoke any negative ramifications. For all I knew, it's heart shape was a guise and it was actually some destructive entity waiting to be freed to wreak havoc upon the world, and was sealed up inside of a heart behind a strangely apathetic cow.

"Is that person really the one you were looking for?" Malon inquired. It was understandable, from an onlooker's standpoint, my subject had simply gone berserk onto a small ball of light.

"Technically, yes. But the person who attacked us wasn't her," I explained, "it's the sword she had. It's called the Sceleris, and if we leave it on her long enough she'll eventually turn into a Stalfos." I cited from my readings back from the forest. It was a rather short article, but I did remember one important fact, "There should be a skeletal undead of some sort nearby controlling it."

"You mean like the ones that come out in the fields at night?" She asked.

"It's similar, but with the power she was throwing around, I'd presume it's much more powerful. Possibly even than a Stalfos." I had never actually encountered even 1/20th of all the demons and beasts I had read about, but I knew enough about them to make a few guesses to their nature. This thing was big…really big. "You should go back to your ranch. I'll look for it on my own. You shouldn't be in danger."

"I can help!" She replied almost instantly. Calming down, she repeated, "I can help…" had a short pause for thought, and continued, "Whatever it is…it's probably in the graveyard. That way." She pointed towards a small path heading off to, presumably, a graveyard. "We can't go there right away. You're hurt…"

"I'll be fine, I still have one and a half wings." I assured her. It was hard to fly straight, but the wing was rapidly regenerating. Almost a fourth of what was severed was already back. But if we waited for it to completely heal, the Sceleris would heal as well, and then the cycle would start all over again and there would only be more destruction.

"Please, at least have some rest…" She pleaded, "You can't just go off with a wound like that. If you put too much stress on one wing, it'll hurt your back, and then it will take even more time to heal."

Not thinking as to where she had such experience with wings, I was somehow coerced into sitting down and having a thimble of milk from Malon's ranch. It seemed to help a bit, about 75 of the wing was there again. It was then that we heard an illegible roar that seemed to shake the very air around us. She immediately took off towards the source, despite my attempts to stop her, and since I was resting on her shoulder I had little choice but to follow.

My subject was on her knees, and most of the Sceleris had regenerated. The sword was back, as well as the bones encircling her arm. The large wing was also almost complete, although the fire in-between the sections of bone that made it up were nowhere to be found. Using the Sceleris Blade as leverage, she pulled herself up to her feet and wasted no time mounting an offensive. I was about to put up a barrier, but Malon surprised me when she took out a whistle and blew on it. An ear-piercing sound came forth, and my subject froze in place as a cow barreled through the wall of a nearby house, as summoned by the whistle, trampling the possessed fighter and dragging him across the town.

"We don't have much time! Come on!" Malon ran off towards the graveyard, and I struggled to keep up, with only about 4/5ths of my wing in working order.

It began to rain.

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We didn't see much when we got there, save a withered old man wandering aimlessly around. Malon, ignoring the small drizzle, ran towards a specific tombstone, stood in front of it, and turned around to me.

"This is the one!" She proclaimed adamantly, although when I got to it I didn't see anything that set it apart from the other ones.

"How do you know?" I flew around and checked it from all angles, but was unable to see anything specifically special about it.

"Can't you see the miasma coming from it?" She looked at me as if I were a bit off, but through some concentration I was able to sense some sort of negative energies around the stone, but with my eyes I saw nothing. But the tombstone was definitely ensorcelled in some way.

Flying up in front of the tombstone, I put my hands onto its surface, for the first time truly realizing how small I was. The stone stood like a great tower, looking down at me with a cold, uncaring stare. Small, circular crystalline shapes formed in the air and pulled together to form a dome around the tombstone and myself, purifying the "miasma", as Malon put it, in a great beam of light that rocketed to the sky, and disappeared. The old man wandering around the area looked at it for a while, but nonchalantly continued on as if it were a recurring event. An opening appeared in front of the gravestone, and before I could stop her, Malon jumped down it.

I flew after her, down the surprisingly deep hole. It had to go down at least a quarter of a mile, and when I finally got to the bottom of it, I fully expected to see a crippled corpse of a Malon that had died from the fall. Instead, she was on her feet and unharmed. There was a thick layer of dust on the ground, but none on her clothes. She had landed on her feet.

We went forward through a tunnel, shortly coming into a large, expansive room. In the center of it was a pentagram etched into the ground with purple fires. And at the center of that was a man. He was wearing a shimmering black armor, made from some kind of obsidian that had been magically altered into a malleable metal. Who knows what kind of enchantments were woven in…he also had long, green hair that fell out of his helm, which was modeled similarly to the armor, and had only one opening in the front, which was a split in the center for him to see through. Inside was only darkness. His hair was the only thing that gave the suggestion that he was humanoid in any way. His sword was equally strange, it resembled a longsword, but it was curved, and had a jagged edge. Intricate runic patterns were engraved along its blade. This person was apparently some kind of dark mage-knight.

"Close." He replied, although I had said nothing out loud. "Some people refer to it as a darker side of life manipulation, or vitamancery, but I simply think it is no different from healing a wound. The only difference is that that wounds I heal are death." He coughed, "With obvious repercussions, but something is better than nothing, I would think. In short, I am what you would call a Necromancer." He glanced up for a bit, and then properly redirected his gaze. "By the fact that you are here, I would believe you have similar powers. The spell I put on the gravestone was no mere child's play."

"Don't compare me to you!" I yelled. The sound echoed off the walls, becoming infinitely louder before eventually disappearing, "Remove the Sceleris from my subject immediately!"

He laughed. My former guardian suddenly appeared before us in a burst of purple flames, the Sceleris Blade in hand. "This subject?"

"You coward!" I accused, "Fight with your own strength!"

"Against a puny little ball of light?" He scoffed, "You hardly seem worth it."

My subject dashed toward us, but a reflection quickly sent her back into the wall. The wild tendrils whipped around the room, but there was some kind of barrier around the dark mage-knight inside of the pentagram, causing him to be unharmed. The Sceleris, however, was knocked back, and my subject was thrown violently into the wall, hitting her head against it and knocking herself unconscious. The dark man watched as the barrier scattered into many smaller squares and dissipated, with a piqued interest.

"My, you're a special one." He said after a short pause. The pentagram dissipated, as did the barrier and the Sceleris that was entwined about my subject. But I didn't even have time to breathe a sigh of relief before the necromancer picked up his sword and pointed it at Malon. "You think you can protect her, little faerie?"

"Don't you lay a hand on her!" I flew in front of Malon, ready to form a barrier to block him, but Malon gently pushed me away.

"I don't need protection." She pulled a shining white feather out of somewhere, and pointed it at the dark knight almost as if it were a weapon. She was suddenly very serious. But before I could enquire, she had already taken action.

"Clouds of the North! Face of the South! Oath of the East! Veil of the West! The thousand silver instruments of Naryu shall banish the evil with her song! By the Triforce of Wisdom, I invoke thee! Angelic Assault!"


	4. Chapter 3

I wasn't really sure what was going on at the moment. I remembered was Malon taking out a feather and saying something about Naryu, and then there was a big flash...I was still in the small tomb, but Malon and the necromancer were gone. And there was a big hole in the ceiling. It was raining, clouds encompassed the entire sky from what I could see. No light was getting in, save for a few chance flashes. I had thought they were from lightning bolts, though not the natural kind.

I returned to ground level to see a fight I would not soon forget. A girl I had previously thought helpless was now flying in the sky on two angelic wings swinging around a zweihander of all things! The other man had a similar pair of wings, though black and not white, they seemed to be bat wings. They flew around every which way in a dazzling display of combat, each somehow managing never to land a blow on the other. Every time Malon met swords with the man, her own sword sparkled with wayward bolts of electricity, which were met with small tendrils of darkness that wrapped around the man's own sword.

Suddenly, Malon pulled back and pointed her blade accusingly at the man, and in a flash, a full-fledged thunderbolt had come and gone. The attack itself lasted only a fraction of a second, however the blue trail it left behind showed the path it took, from the tip of the angel's blade all the way to the man's previous position. The trail split into many smaller lines there, going around where he had been. The dark warrior was now extremely high in the air, and plummeting fast with his sword below him.

Though he did have wings, at the speed he was falling, it was impossible to control his flight. Malon simply pulled back a bit, and the necromancer helplessly fell in front of her. With perfect timing, she thrust her weapon out in front of her as her opponent was directly in front of her, and became a blur as she executed an amazing combo that carried the man across the sky, before she made a short pause to raise her sword. With a cry of "Alexandrite!" she threw it down again and there was a flash.

The light lasted a while longer than the thunderbolt, but when it finally dimmed out I was amazed to see none of the land below had been harmed. With the way she had thrown her blade down, I would have expected the blast to go straight down. Judging from the fact that her opponent was no longer there, I assumed he had dodged it. Though I did question the nature of the attack, it didn't seem quite strong enough to cause a man of his power to simply cease to exist.

My fears were confirmed as the man emerged from a swirling dark orifice that had appeared in the sky above Malon. He tried a downward attack again, although this time he controlled his fall more to the point where he was able to come to a complete halt directly above her. He brought his blade down. She brought hers up. They were trapped in a deadlock for what seemed like hours. Their auras, even, ran against each other in the sky in a storm of white and black.

Finally, the man batted Malon's sword away and took a swing.

I almost flew up to block it for her. But from the colorless fissure between their two auras, I could see that it was no use. This was a battle between light and darkness. The two supreme elements of creation and destruction. A being of any other nature had no place here. If I went, I would be obliterated by their mere presence. I had no choice but to sit and watch.

Malon was gone. The dark man looked just as surprised as I was. Then I realized the look he had wasn't one of astonishment, it was one of pain. I noticed the ethereal blue trail left behind by one of Malon's thunderbolts just before it faded into the colorless sky. Now that they had stopped moving, I recognized the runes on the man's armor as protection from light, not lightning. The metal plating made him a target for thunder attacks.

As he slowly began to sink from the skies, the storm between the dark and light in the sky began to shift drastically. The inky blackness slowly retreated and then was eventually blown away as the bright light cascaded over the man like a tidal wave. But when it had cleared I saw that the darkness had not simply faded away into nothingness, but had been concentrated in front of the man as a shield. The last remnants of it peeled away to reveal a terrible storm in the sky. The energy released from their battle had caused winds to swirl around into a hurricane, and I was lucky to be in the eye of it. I couldn't see the village from here, but chances are it's destroyed by now. But if the hurricane increased to such a size fast enough that Kakariko was safely nestled within the eye before it reached lethal strength, areas as far away as Malon's ranch and the castle were in danger of destruction.

The dark man pointed his sword upwards and muttered something I didn't recognize. His free hand lit up with purple electricity, and when Malon came back into view, he thrust it in her direction immediately. She did the same, and then they were gone. I saw the dim blue trail from where Malon's bolt had been, but it met with an equally dim purple one, that continued to where her opponent had been. It was Pravus, negative energy channeled into electricity. For every light attack Malon had, he had an evil equivalent.

They both disappeared again, and soon the sky lit up with flashes from both the storm's thunder and that of the opposing forces that darted around under the clouds. The Angel and the Demon both met in a fantastic flash of power that was unrivaled in anything I had ever read about. But the man suddenly stopped moving, and despite their speed, stopped one of Malon's thunderbolts with his hand. Stunned, she stopped, and he took this opportunity to fly up to her and strike her in the chest with his free hand.

"Enchain: Lightning!"

Lines drew themselves about in the air, shining with a rainbow-esque candescence. The lines slowly began to move about, assembling themselves around the man's hand, marking Malon's chest with a glowing sigil that depicted four pentagrams facing in each of the cardinal directions with a lightning bolt in the middle.

Malon stumbled back, trying to counter with a thunderbolt, but nothing came out. Her electrical attacks were sealed off and the man's armor protected him from light attacks. Malon was limited to strikes with her sword. But as the man himself pulled back, I saw the same sigil embedded on his palm. In order to seal off Malon's electrical assault, he had to seal away his own.

Despite this, the man cackled evilly and flew backwards. With each flap of his wings, a spinning blade of purple air formed in front of him. Three blades of cutting miasma whipped through the air towards the stunned angel, but she quickly regained composure and struck one with her sword. It reversed direction, slamming into the one behind it with frightening accuracy. However, she failed to anticipate the third. It sliced through her left wing, which immediately dispersed into small particles of light that faded into the swirling sky above them. With only one wing, she lost balance and plummeted toward the ground.

Then she stopped. Small particles of light began to pour forth from all the gravestones, as the souls sealed there offered their energies. All of the righteous souls trapped here by the man's dark bindings gave all they could to the young angel. Spiritual matter clustered around Malon's back, and soon, with the help those who could not be seen, a shining white wing formed to compliment the other. To finalize it, seven small orbs of light emerged from my own self to form the final feather.

She ascended, holding her sword up high and proclaiming her faith.

"All that is, all that was, all that will be!" She began, "Creation empowered by creation! No longer shall the clouds enshroud all the three gods have made! Din! Farore! Naryu! By the land and the sea and the sky, lend me the sacred blade to destroy the darkness before me!"

She pointed her sword in front of her, which immediately grew another foot, and became about three times as wide at the base, the blade slowly converging on a point at the tip in a steep triangular shape. The hilt itself grew wings and a halo formed around it. A bluish-whitish, crystalline blade sat upon a hilt only to be held by the most divine of beings.

"Rakuen!"

The man paid her new weapon no mind, sending more blades of defiled air at the young angel. He made sure to send an odd number, hoping he could get another hit the same way as before, but it didn't work as Malon simply disappeared and reappeared behind the man to avoid them altogether. He turned around, meeting her blade as if it was no different than before. Small tendrils of darkness began to come out of the black sword's hilt, wrapping up the blade and spiraling off, wildly whipping around the air, slowly forming a dark cage around Malon.

However, she simply raised her sword, and the entwining darkness was obliterated. The dark man himself was blinded by the attack, and Malon took this chance to bring the blade down on his head. The man's helm cracked, and then broke. As the shattered helmet rained down to reveal the man's face, Malon's eyes widened. She flew back, and steadied herself, but he stance was still shaky. The man's face instilled a horrible fear within her.

When he looked up, I saw the face myself. It didn't look at all frightening to me. In fact, he looked a rather handsome young man. His hair, no longer influenced by the helmet, fell down the back of his armor freely. His hair was green, though a darker shade than Saria's was, straight and surprisingly long, going almost down to his waist.

"You…" She said, trembling. She righted herself again to stop herself from shaking and pointed her sword at him. However, soon she started shaking again, putting both hands on her sword and lowering it a little.

"Come now, don't give me that." The man grinned, "You should be happy when you're reunited with such an old friend."

Malon pointed her sword at him, trying to send a lightning bolt his way, but the seal on her chest lit up instead. She winced in pain from the backlash from the unreleased energy, remembering her lightning attacks were sealed off. By the time she looked up, the man was gone. He reappeared behind her, gently putting an arm around her shoulder.

"That was kind of mean." He said with mock sadness. Malon almost immediately spun around with intent to behead him, but the man was instantly on the other side of her again. He was probably about to say something else, but he failed to notice Malon hadn't stopped spinning with her sword. Completing a full 360 degrees, she hit him in the side with her blade, and used the opening to unleash a devastating white light.

When I could see again, the man was still trying to regain his composure after the attack, confused as to why his protection from light didn't defend him. Raising his blade again, he charged at Malon, who simply brought her sword up to block it as though she were blocking a wooden stick. The dark man's sword simply bounced off the blade. Malon had stopped shaking. She didn't even flinch at the man's attack.

"Even in the darkest hour of night," she explained, "the moon will light the path for those who walk it."

Finally, I realized why Malon's attack had hurt him, even though he had protection from light. Malon was using moonlight, not quite light but not quite darkness. Despite his armor's protection from light, and his innate resistance to darkness as a necromancer, he still had a weak spot.

For the first time, I saw the man's eyes show fear.

Malon flew towards the man, taking a controlled swing with her sword. The man quickly flew backwards to dodge it, sending another blade of darkened air in the process. Malon simply moved a bit to the right and continued her assault. The man could only go farther and farther back, sending wave after wave of blades of defiled air that never hit. Even as they zoomed through the air, they no longer seemed to have an axis, spinning around uncontrollably. Malon had struck so much fear into his heart that he could no longer control his own attacks. Malon, on the contrary, looked calm to the point where it was almost frightening. The same cold, apathetic, almost aristocratic look on her face never seemed to change as she unleashed her power.

Her opponent, however, was only getting more and more afraid. I couldn't tell if he was just barely dodging Malon's sword, or if she was simply toying with him. It was almost like a child playing with a toy, having fun but not wanting to admit it, covering his joy with a bored, uncaring face. The dark knight suddenly began trying to force Malon back with his own sword, launching a barrage of random, uncontrolled strikes. The angel moved no more than her wrist to block the attack, and after a while decided to use one of the many openings in his flurry to knock him further back. Before the man was even in movement from her attack, Malon was already behind him.

The man noticed Malon wasn't in front of him anymore, and was startled when he turned around to find her right there behind him. He edged back, but Malon offered no immediate offense. The man took a swing, but he only cut air as he spun around to see that Malon had teleported behind him yet again.

"Our guide in darkness…"

The man recognized it as the beginning of another incantation, and quickly flew forward to stop it. However, once again, he hit nothing. Looking to his right, he saw Malon there, but when he tried to cut her again, she simply disappeared and reappeared somewhere else. No matter how fast the man went, he was unable to catch her. She simply moved and continued her spell.

"To those lost in the night…the goddesses extend this light…a light within the darkness…neither one nor the other…superior, yet inferior to both…It cannot be taken…It cannot be rejected…only accepted…"

The man made one final rush at Malon, who made no attempt to dodge. She only brought up her sword to block. The man desperately tried to force a blow, but Malon simply pushed his sword downwards. Putting both hands on the hilt of her blade, she brought it back up with a surprising force. It looked almost as though she were slashing it through water, that slight, sluggish resistance that caused her blade to move too slow to hit. The man easily dodged by moving backwards, but then, following the angel's blade came a white, glowing light that almost split the man in half. He dodged it just in time by moving farther back, to see the white light encircle Malon completely, protecting her with a giant glowing white orb in the image of a full moon. As the man began to fly further back to get away from it, Malon slowly came through the bottom of the giant orb, holding it above her head threateningly.

"Illumination."

The orb of light suddenly became more violent, losing its perfect spherical shape to become a vaguely circular ball of destruction. Malon held it out in front of her, letting it burst into thousands of tiny bullets that flew towards the man. He was somehow able to combine deflection with his sword and rapid movement to dodge most of them, but the second one of them hit, he couldn't defend against the next, or the next, or the next. Each bullet relied on the opening from the last to bombard him with a shower of light. For what seemed like forever, the small orbs of white light assaulted the man's armor in an endless stream of moonlight.

When it was over, he simply was still, hovering in the air as if waiting for something to happen. It was then that I realized Malon had dissapeared. He voice echoed throughout the swirling winds...

"Adamant as ever..."

As ever...I was almost positive now these people knew each other...and whatever happened between them was no mere quarrel. This man must have did something to Malon in the past, or vice versa...

"Your sins lay heavy upon you…only true light can vanquish an evil such as yourself."

Malon abruptly appeared next to him, and their blades met. Suddenly, Malon took one hand off the handle of her sword, holding off the dark knight's blade one-handed. She used her free hand to grab hold of the man's shoulder plate, making it so he couldn't escape the coming attack.

"Faith, manifest!"

The second Malon even began the incantation, the dark man's eyes lit up with fear. He knew what was coming next, but thanks to Malon's grip on his armor, he wouldn't be able to get away from it.

"Thy candle to repel darkness!"

The man began jerking wildly, in a vain attempt to free himself from Malon's death grip. Whatever was coming, it was incredibly powerful. I took cover behind a gravestone.

"The Vielle of Naryu to banish all evil!"

The dark man tried lifting his sword to strike her, but his shoulder would not respond. The arm Malon was holding was his sword-arm. He was completely and utterly trapped. He braced for impact.

"All that destroys shall itself be torn asunder!"

The man let out an illegible roar, as the closeness to his own demise spurred a renewal in strength. But it was still to no use. He could only sit and wait as time trudged closer and closer to his end.

"Immerse yourself in your own sin, so that it may be severed from thyself!"

"No!"

Ribbons appeared in the sky, seeming to weave through the air itself as it glimmered with a pristine shimmer, encircling the two bonded fighters. Then, suddenly, they all scattered into tiny particles, like millions of raindrops frozen in midair.

"Scintillate fate, guide those who are lost to the nothingness that consumes their hearts!"

As soon as she finished that sentence, each particle expanded, and became a sword. Thousands of blades littered the sky, and the clouds above opened, allowing a single beam of light to pierce the dark atmosphere. It reflected from the edges of all the blades, forming a dome of brightness that eclipsed the darkness around it.

"Effervescent wings of arcadium, lift thy sin, but forget it not! Suffer all of the pain you have caused!"

The dome of blades offered no escape. Malon let go of the man and disappeared, reappearing outside the shining blades of light. The man inside was doomed. He couldn't even open his eyes amidst the blinding light surrounding him. Two more words, and he would be no more.

"Catharsis Glint!"

The blades all slowly began to converge on their target, one by one gaining speed until they shot forth like bullets. The runes offering him protection of light shone as the swords struck the small sigils that laced his armor. The first blade touched one of the characters, and promptly dissipated. The sigil on the armor was gone as well. As each blade touched the man's plated armor, it connected with one of the runic enchantments on it and both were dispelled. Blades rained down like bullets, and the man's armor was becoming more and more like an ordinary sheet of metal.

As the last blade touched the last magical defense the man had, all he had on was no more protective than the armor worn by the guard at the gate of the village. He himself was unharmed, but had no defenses left. Suddenly, a sword appeared in his chest. Malon, behind him, easily pierced the man's armor with a blade no human-crafted metal could repel. As the dark wings he flew on disintegrated, he slowly sunk from the sky. Malon withdrew her blade and looked down upon him as would a noble look upon a commoner, and in a cold, uncaring voice I never expected to hear from her, she gave him her final thoughts.

"You are forgiven."


End file.
